Chewin' the Fat
by Steel Komodo
Summary: If you listen close enough, you can hear the conversations from around the poker table. Rated T for swearing and various unpleasent themes, including, but not limited to, "Giraffe Time".
1. Marzipan

***Triumphant Music* I return! And as an apology for keeping you all waiting, as well as cancelling Mortal Kickball, I present to you... A POKER NIGHT AT THE INVENTORY FIC SERIES! *TA-DAAAAA!**

**Each chapter will be around 1'000 words, and expand on instances of dialogue found in the game, so as to give a more in-depth view of the characters and how the look upon each other. Hopefully this will give you a bit more insight onto the wierd and wonderful world of Poker Night.**

**Rated T for Tycho, which explains itself, really. Also, GO AWAY, STRONG BAD/TYCHO FANGIRLS! Your pairing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and will not be featured in any of these fics ever. So go. ****Oh, and I don't own anything about the game. We clear? Now gimme five. :D**

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"At least this is better than poker night at Homestar's."

Tycho looked up from his cards and smirked. Now was his chance to deliver some epic-scale poetic justice that would rival the announcement of _Marvel vs. Capcom 3_ and be forever remembered by future generations. The young gamer had stuck out against Strong Bad's snide comments towards both his social life and the popularity of his website for a few days, but last week's remark about "cheese doodles and rejection" had been the last straw, and now Tycho was set to see the self-proclaimed "wrestleman" knocked down from his little egotistical fantasy no matter what it took. And the recent comment had just made the perfect ammo for this endeavour.

"Why's that?" he innocently asked as he watched the masked man carelessly toss a few poker chips into the middle of the table. Strong Bad rarely talked about his friends from Free Country USA unless asked directly about them, and the impression the others got was not the best, to say the least – Homestar Runner, despite his reputation as a terrific athlete, had sounded like an incredible loser, even to a guy like Tycho. But of course, he took everything Strong Bad said with a pinch of salt, and sometimes a tall glass of gin fizz.

The wrestler narrowed his eyes as Tycho, but suspected nothing. "Well," he went on in his gravelly voice, "Marzipan's always walking around _au-natural_, for one thing."

"Who is this Marzipan?" This question arrived via the rumbling tones of the Heavy Weapons Guy, who was currently shovelling a ridiculous amount of chips into the pot with his enormous hands. Tycho glanced briefly up at the huge Russian, nervously reminding himself that the man killed people for a living and, as such, was not to be taken lightly.

"Oh, _she's_ Homestar's on-again, off-again girlfriend," explained Strong Bad dismissively, waving a boxing-gloved hand by way of emphasis. "Not to mention the Grand High Chairwoman of the Go-Back-to-Eating-Grass Society," he added.

"I'm sorry," chipped in the rabbit-like Max as he stopped poking his bellybutton in order to take part in the conversation. "But my brain kinda tuned out at 'au-natural' and that reminded me of time some classy lady tried to smuggle drugs across the border by stuffing 'em down her-"

"Yes, yes, Max," Tycho hurriedly interrupted before the cringe-inducing story could be repeated. He looked down at his cards, took a quick peek under them and groaned. A Two and a Jack – not what he wanted at all, and the River card probably wouldn't ease his situation any more. "I fold," he grumbled, pushing the cards away from him.

"You heard right, Bunny-man," affirmed Strong Bad, albeit with a somewhat disgusted expression. "Starkers. The Birthday Suit, if you will."

Tycho made his move just as Winslow, the highly-refined patron of the Inventory, dealt the River card. "Shame, though," he sighed, a smirk spreading out over his features as he folded his arms. "I mean, that's the closest you'll ever get to a real live woman, huh?"

The reaction was instant – Strong Bad spluttered and waved his arms indignantly, almost knocking over his pile of chips as he went. Max, however, grinned even wider than before, and Heavy actually chuckled with amusement at his smaller comrade's frustrated expression. Tycho's smirk grew – he'd found the chink in Strong Bad's armour, and was mentally fetching a large crowbar and hammer to pry it open and do some more damage.

"Look, Dorkleson," retorted the wrestleman once he'd recovered. "I dunno about you, but vegan broomsticks are _not_ my kind of thing!"

"Broomstick?" Heavy quizzed as he leant over the table, a small smile present. "She has no personality, then?"

"Nuh-uh," was the firm reply. "Built just like a broomstick, too – skinny at the top, wide at the bottom. And I do mean wide."

"That doesn't sound so-" Max began as he made his bet.

"_Wide,_" growled Strong Bad, interrupting.

"Oh, come on," Tycho jeered, watching with glee as Strong Bad was forced to fold. "How does a big booty _not_ turn you on?"

"Not when its owner's trying to force-feed me tofu and soya every ten seconds!" yelled Strong Bad, visibly seething. He then jumped a little as, upon hearing this, Heavy burst out laughing. It was like watching an earthquake in human form.

Strong Bad groaned in annoyance, and lent forward as the still-chuckling Heavy reached for some chips to call Max's bet. "Look," he grumbled, "lemme give you all a mental picture. You know the way a slug moves? Like, with one foot?"

"Yep!" trilled Max as he twirled one ear out of boredom.

"Now," said Strong Bad slowly, as if speaking to a small child about making babies, "try imagining that goin' on with something only _remotely_ human shaped."

There was a decidedly long pause as the entire table, including Winslow, tried to wrap their minds around this concept. Almost immediately, they consigned the resulting, very disturbing footage to the cutting room floor of the brain, and there was a tinkling crash as Heavy, who had paused mid-call to think, dropped his chips back onto the table in shock.

"Oh, fucking _hell_," groaned Tycho, dropping his head into his hands. Not even thinking about those wonderful giraffes could help him now.

"I do not want to be at table now," rumbled Heavy in a remorseful tone as he leant back and folded instead. Only Max still seemed chipper, and not just because he'd just won a large sum of chips.

"Oh, so _that's_ what you meant by 'broomstick'. For a moment there, I thought you just meant she- ooh, chips!" And the easily-distracted rabbit-thing jumped up onto the table and dragged the pile of poker chips over to his side. Tycho groaned, and prepared himself for the next long, torturous hand. But he could _feel_ Strong Bad's triumphant glare pass over him – somehow, he had _known_.

_Sometimes_, he though, _getting even is not as easy as it sounds_.

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**There you go. Rate and review, as always, and CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM ONLY, as always.**


	2. Jobs

**And here's Chapter 2! Sorry for the wait, but homework has been quite thick on the ground as of late. :P**

**Again, I do not own any of the characters in Poker Night, and there is no Strong Bad/Tycho, so go away if that's what you're expecting.**

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"Blue sweater man."

"Tycho."

"Tycho, then." The hulking form of Heavy leant forward as he pushed a small bet into the pot. "What do you do with life?"

Tycho paused in the middle of calling the bet, taken aback by the fact that such a simple-minded person could ask such a deep question. Normally, the towering Russian gave no indication of anything other than a man who only cared about his enormous minigun and the paycheck he'd receive at the end of the day. But then he'd come out with _questions_, or say _things_ that caught you off guard and suggested that something more was going on in his head.

"Me?" he asked, just to clarify, before throwing his chips into the pot.

"Yes." Now the Heavy seemed to be looking at Tycho with a sort of sympathy, doubtfully eying the smaller man's slim frame. "What is possible with tiny frail body?"

Ignoring the comment on his stature, Tycho realised he was now in what Gabe often called a "sticky situation". He was being quizzed on his spare time, which involved trawling through online forums and updating the Penny Arcade website, by a man from the mid-to-late 1960's who believed that Purple Rain was new music and owned a walkman. How on earth was he going to explain things like the internet and video games to a person like this? None of his long WoW career had prepared him for this.

"I occupy myself with... _simulations_ of various kinds," he tried, grinning sheepishly. He'd decided to play it safe and use layman's terms, so that his larger companion could understand better.

"Oh, you mean games?"

Tycho jerked as though stung. "Excuse me?"

"You know, like _Space Invaders_ or _Pac-Man_." The huge Russian grinned disarmingly. "Am I right?"

"Uh... yeah."

"But you cannot spend all day playing games, no? Surely you have job?"

"I, uh..."

"Hey, don't forget Videlectrix's latest releases, man!" This came from Strong Bad, who, having just raised Tycho's bet, was reclining in his chair and looking almost disdainfully at the other competitors. Right now, the wrestleman was in a good mood after winning a sizable pot in the last round, which tended to irritate Tycho even more than usual.

"Strong Bad, you rendered yourself incapable of talking about games the moment you mentioned Videlectrix," sighed Tycho with obvious annoyance – Strong Bad seemed to have a severe case of Nostalgia Filter, which tended to leak into conversations when no-one was looking. "But go on."

"How about _Street Masher vs. Snake Boxer _for the Pocket Funmachine?" The masked man struck a dramatic pose as he rattled off the title of his latest 30-year-old, 8-bit monstrosity. "Now, _there's_ a game for ya."

"No, it isn't" said Tycho, sharply. He was rapidly getting sick of the wrestleman's refusal to acknowledge the superior quality and power of modern technology, and the tone of his voice said as much. Before Strong Bad could make any wisecracks, however, a chink of glass on wood signalled the arrival of Max with drinks all round – two Cold Ones, a gin fizz and a peach Bellini. The rabbit-thing, having been eliminated by Strong Bad previously, then hopped back up into his chair and listened to the conversation with interest.

"Thank you, little bunny," rumbled Heavy, reaching out to take his glass before turning back to Tycho. "Anyway, what do you do for living, little man?"

"Oh, I run an online comic book business," was Tycho's casual reply as he reached over to scoop up the fizzy beverage, ignoring Strong Bad's disdainful glare. "I write the jokes, and my roommate Gabe does all the drawings. Then we post it up for all the people to read and comment on, and sometimes get angry over some insignificant little detail."

"But looking at comic is free, yes?" The Heavy had a small idea of how the internet worked, and one of the concepts he had grasped was that using it was free as long as you had a computer. "Free" was a thing that the Russian had struggled with for a bit – in RED, he had to pay for almost everything with his sizable cheques.

"Yeah." Tycho sipped his drink, wondering where this was going.

"So how does little man make money?"

Uh-oh. Another bullet that needed major dodging, and fast. Come to think of it, Tycho had long forgotten how Penny Arcade made money in the first place – the bucks just sort of rolled into his bank account without any explanation. "Uh..." he tried, scratching his head as he racked his brains for an answer.

"I'll tell ya how he does it!" Max suddenly jumped up in his seat, brandishing his Cold One like a tyre iron. "Merchandise, that's how!"

Heavy's eyebrows raised. "Merchandise?"

"Yep!" The rabbit grinned even wider, an amazing feat for someone who was smiling all the time. "You hire a company to make a bunch of, say, Tycho plush dolls or T-shirts or something like that, and then sell them to the slavering masses at ridiculously high prices! My pal Bosco does that all the time during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades!"

Realization dawned. "Oh, yes, I understand," rumbled Heavy, casually pushing chips into the pot. "RED does something like that, too!"

"Really?"

"Yes." Heavy smiled around the table as Winslow drew the flop cards, complete with the audible sound of paper sliding across wood. "We have collection of local stores that sell all kinds of goods, like normal convenience stores. But really, they are fronts for RED Team fund collecting."

Max's eyes narrowed. "That sounds a lot like Corporate Corruption if you ask me. Sam and I usually have to get the crowbar and butter for _that_."

"_Da_, but is reliable source of money for team."

As the two argued, Tycho wisely decided not to point out that at least Penny Arcade didn't hire a bunch of goons to kill people. But then again, few other webcomics had tried cornering _that_ particular market. Hmm...

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**Read and Review, as always. :D**


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